Re: Antarctic Cities

J.J. O'Shea <try.not.to@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Japan, 1945.

The fire-raids and the nuclear raids were spectacular, and allowed for a
face-saving out, but what killed the Empire of Japan was the submarine
blockade which cut off outside supplies of, well, _everything_. Including
food.

After the war, at the war crimes trials, the British government wanted to
hang Donitz and Raeder for the war crime of unrestricted submarine warfare.
That plan was scuppered when Admiral Ernest J. King, USN, and noted
Anglophobe, pointed out that what Donitz and Raeder _tried_ to do to Britain,
he, Lockwood, and Nimitz _succeeded_ in doing to Japan.

Donitz & Raeder got 10 years and were out in under five.

You can make a good case that the main thing which fucked over Japan was
kicking the world's major economic power square in the nuts, and then
assuming that they would either a) roll over and die or b) fight back but
not come up with the idea of putting their vast economic power into
building a gigantic machine dedicated to revenge.

It is probably safe to say that a Japan which was totally self-sufficient
regarding food in 1941 would not have managed to stay that way through
1945. The lack of self sufficiency in this case would be an effect, not a
cause, of their fucked-ness. The fact that they started out
not-self-sufficient isn't a big change.

Hong Kong and Singapore, 1942. In both cases, they were city-states on small
islands near to the mainland of Asia, packed full of people and which could
not grow food... indeed, they didn't even have sufficient water. In both
cases, the Japanese army achieved victory by the simple method of capturing
the main water reservoirs, and then turning off the tap. (No, it is _NOT_
true that the coast defence guns at Singapore could not be turned to fire
inland; they were, in fact, heavily used to do just that, particularly in the
fight to try to keep the reservoir. They just failed to keep the Japanese
army away, that's all.)

Lots of other places got conquered by the Japanese without being so
vulnerable, though. And this bit that you outline is a vulnerability of
basically every city. Cities are vulnerable to siege, and have been since
the siege was invented.

--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software
.

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